2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

tugged on before we’d entered the village border.
Lucien pulled up his mare to a High Fae male who looked like he was in charge of
building a house bordering the well fountain. “We came to see if any help was needed,” he
said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Our services are yours for the day.”
The male blanched. “Gratitude, my lord, but none is needed.” His eyes gobbled me up,
widening. “The debt is paid.”
The sweat on my palms felt thicker, warmer. My mare stomped a hoof on the ruddy dirt
street.
“Please,” Lucien said, bowing his head gracefully. “The effort to rebuild is our burden
to share. It would be our honor.”
The male shook his head. “The debt is paid.”
And so it went at every place we stopped in the village: Lucien dismounting, asking to
help, and polite, reverent rejections.
Within twenty minutes, we were already riding back into the shadows and rustle of the
woods.
“Did he let you take me today,” I said hoarsely, “so that I’d stop asking to help
rebuild?”
“No. I decided to take you myself. For that exact reason. They don’t want or need your
help. Your presence is a distraction and a reminder of what they went through.”
I flinched. “They weren’t Under the Mountain, though. I recognized none of them.”
Lucien shuddered. “No. Amarantha had … camps for them. The nobles and favored
faeries were allowed to dwell Under the Mountain. But if the people of a court weren’t
working to bring in goods and food, they were locked in camps in a network of tunnels
beneath the Mountain. Thousands of them, crammed into chambers and tunnels with no
light, no air. For fifty years.”
“No one ever said—”
“It was forbidden to speak of it. Some of them went mad, started preying on the others
when Amarantha forgot to order her guards to feed them. Some formed bands that
prowled the camps and did—” He rubbed his brows with a thumb and forefinger. “They
did horrible things. Right now, they’re trying to remember what it is to be normal—how to
live.”
Bile burned my throat. But this wedding … yes, perhaps it would be the start of that
healing.
Still, a blanket seemed to smother my senses, drowning out sound, taste, feeling.
“I know you wanted to help,” Lucien offered. “I’m sorry.”
So was I.
The vastness of my now-unending existence yawned open before me.